Corruption is to Lie
by Arbitrary Escape
Summary: Fleeting fancies dance slowly, but their feet move faster than we feel. Now a series of one-shots; some interrelated, some not.
1. Corruption is to Lie

He was a boy who hated honesty; as much as he hated to admit anything, that was the one truth he held close to his heart. His face was steel, and his heart warm. His eyes were cold and dead; everyone saw it. But they tended to ignore it. At least, they tried to.

He wasn't someone who people could leave alone though. They were drawn to him, whether they knew it or not. The smallest quirk of his lips drew shivers against skin, and his laugh prompted the twitching of ears. His attention always brought upon the widening of eyes and the slightest of aversions.

People were often unsure of whether or not to approach him, but in the end, they often acquiesced.

'It was just a bad feeling, right?'

There were only a handful of people who distrusted him completely - and funnily enough, they all did so on sight. Those people were also his closest confidants (a total of two people). The first was his mother; who would know him better? The second was actually a girl who he had immediately struck up an enmity with, but with whom he would eventually develop a mellow friendship.

His eyes shone with their glow of distaste, but he kept his cards close to his heart and endured three grueling years of junior high, only to arrive at his current scenario: a second year in senior high, burning with a fervor of childhood wist that he never possessed.

"Hey." His words were soft as usual, as though they were never meant to be heard, much less spoken. The back of his wrist lay against his face, a hand covering his eyes, his head on her lap.

"Hm?" She smiled at him distractedly; he didn't have to look at her to know that. But one eye peeked open and he saw that she was close to tears behind her glasses. Tiredness snapped, his focus narrowed.

"Who?" The _What?_ went unsaid. She turned away slightly and bit her lip.

"My parents." He stiffened; he understood. Her mother was… overbearing, but her father more so. Most people found her mother unbearable - they had never met her father. Unfortunately, as all things had, his friendship with her came with that cost.

Her father saw him as a seed of trust between his family and theirs; and he believed the friendship to beneficial and hadn't the slightest clue that it was anything more than superficial. Small mercies, the boy mused as he sat up and wrapped his arms around the teary-eyed girl.

His fingers found their way into her hair, stroking it with a gentleness that came with practice more than ease. "Shh," he whispered in her ear. "It's okay. It's okay."

"But it's not. They want me to be someone I'm not, and I'm scared. I live away from them, sure, but only until summer seasons." He knew that all already. "And this year… this year, they said no more of it." His eyes closed with remorse. It had to happen eventually; costs were rising, and the excuse that it was just much more efficient and beneficial to keep the family together would be almost inarguable.

He didn't tell her sorry. Instead, he kissed the crown of her head and palmed the back of her hands as he kneaded their fingers together.

Her hiccups came to a halt, but he knew it was from the numbness and blanking out. There was nothing they could really do.

The rooftop hadn't been so empty before. Time was wasting, and there was no force on Earth that could stop him. He was an unrelenting father, after all. The sky burned vermillion as it blended with a mix of golden honeydew, clouds just wisps among the horizon.

She traced the initials embroidered against the inner linings of his lapels as they stood, her grip tight.

He walked her back to her apartment as though this were the end of an era and they were the last vestiges of the previous cog in the cycle of evolution. Their fingers brushed gently against the waves of wind and the buzzing of cars. The sound of a thousand voices drowned everything, including their own steps.

But they held each other, even as she led him past the front door and onto her beaten-down couch, worn by the years and weary of holding the weight of her world. Their heads clanked against one another as they drifted off into sleep.

When morning came, she had but one more request for him, to which he immediately complied, a rare, full-blown smile haunting his lips. He gave no more glances as he departed.

She quietly trudged into her room, her back splayed itself against her bed. In her grasp, she held a small treasure to add to her collection of things that built the mountain they called their relationship. The roughness his tag was something she once teased him about, but that had long since disappeared.

The "H. H." stared back at her as she closed her eyes, school all but an afterthought.

A tear was shed for the youth that was but a dream.

* * *

 _Who are the characters in this story? You tell me._


	2. Can I help you?

Summary: In which Hachiman was never that much a troubled student so much as he was a troubled person, and no one had an interest in his life. But still, one speech made all the difference.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: Characters are property of Watari Wataru**

* * *

He was staring at a ghost from his past. A ghost, quite literally.

She wasn't anyone super memorable. Oh, sure; she was one of his teachers - he definitely spent a lot of time with her, at least, somewhat. But she was little more than a memory.

She had been his teacher in high school, but those were eight years far gone.

If anything, he remembered how his male classmates complained how her attitude was too heated and frigid, and that her body was going to waste. But even those comments meant very little to the boy who was buried in his books.

Back then, and even now. Over the course of his years, he had grown to finish his degree at university in, amazingly, physics and pure mathematics (rather contradictory as a pair, his professors often mused). While some things changed, not all of them often do.

But there his old teacher stood, the wisps of cigarette smoke fleeing from her lips as she huffed out her conscience into the abyssal sky. Her hands gripped the railing on the bridge with a jagged strength, her knuckles pale in the night.

He sighed. "Hello, sensei."

Startled, her eyes widened as her eyes turned to catch him in her peripherals. Her brows furrowed, and her mouth parted to form a small 'o.' He could tell that she struggled to remember him, which dragged a a wry semi-smile awkwardly across his face.

He laughed. "It's, uh, been a while." His fingers scratched an itch on the back of his head he didn't even know he had. "You taught me probably somewhere around ten years ago." She flinched, as though his words struck like a crippling blow.

Before she could say anything else, he closed the distance and stood next to her; instead of giving her his undivided attention, he turned to face the clouds. "You probably don't remember me;" he continued, "I was a scrawny little thing back then, you know? All elbows and knees, a bit of bicep and a lick of wit, but really, naïve about everything.

"I was one of those kids whose bark was worse than his bite, if I ever said anything at all. Most of the time, you didn't really remember my name except during attendance."

He heard her swallow, but he felt her gaze. She nodded dumbly.

"You looked like you needed someone just now, you know?" The whiteness on her face flushed the slightest bit pink; she must have been embarrassed to have come off as so desperate that a former student had to come to her aid.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that." She blinked.

"I mean, we've all been there," he laughed nervously. He struggled to put his thoughts into words, she realized, probably out of some mild embarrassment and awkwardness. She didn't know if he was doing it on purpose, or how this happened, but she let him go on. "Especially me. Like I said before, wasn't the brightest of kids out there. But you said something to me once, and it stuck with me; in a way, who I am is because of you."

When her voice found itself, she asked, "What was it?"

He gave her a smile. "You'll have to find out some other time. We can settle over a cup of coffee or something a bit… more, if you'd like."

This time, she flushed a much darker hue. She sputtered, and his eyebrows rose as he went to correct himself. "I didn't mean like a date or a one-night stand or … anything like that." He paused, again, and searched for the right words. "I'm just saying that… well, you seem a bit lonely."

He looked her in the eye. "And sometimes, all you need in the world is a friend."

* * *

" _You know, Hikigaya," his teacher began casually, "You have a lot of talent for a young man. You're not physically exceptional, but you're sort of tall for a Japanese boy. You could model. You have some skills in literature, history, language, and psychology; there are a whole bunch of fields you can explore."_

" _But sensei," he replied, "from what I see around me, people care little about those last four fields - especially here in Japan. Or at least in this part of Chiba."_

 _She frowned. "There's some truth to what you're saying, but if you let life build the walls for you, you'll never want to climb or jump them until you find the nerve. And by that point, you will have grown old and weary enough to tell yourself that you still cannot do a thing."_

 _He blinked. She continued, "There is still so much time for your future, because you're young. But," she trailed off. Her gaze drifted into the distance, and her eyes glazed over. "As long as you live, there is another moment of your life._ Carpe diem _, Hikigaya. The future is not tomorrow - tomorrow is today._

" _If you put things off, you'll never put weight or accountability on yourself. And then, you'll have no one else to blame. You can't pretend that the world is fair or just. But you also cannot pretend that the world deserves you, or you the world. All we are is what we make of ourselves._

" _We're dealt different cards at birth, and during life. And yet, we all breathe the same air. All of our have one thing: choice. And that is the most powerful magic that humans don't realize they have."_


End file.
